#jean pierre melville
Jean Cocteau with Jean-Pierre Melville
Photo by Georges Dambier
Between grief and nothing, I’ll take grief.
Ā bout de souffle (Breathless) dir. Jean-Luc Godard (1960)
Revolutionary Cinema
Army of Shadows, Jean-Pierre Melville
As Melville himself put it, “You must be madly in love with cinema to create films. You also need a huge cinematic baggage.” Your awareness of film history, of the technical aspects of filmmaking, of film language, and of your cinematic style are vital to great filmmaking. Determination is another quality that emerges from that mad love for cinema. After serving in World War II, Melville applied to join the union in the French film industry and was rejected. Determined, he opened his own studio and began writing and directing his films. Later, he lost his studio to a fire, only to successfully come out of such a devastation through the need to continue making films. Obstacles always surface for the filmmaker, however, it is how one faces those obstacles that counts. (excerpt from: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï: “I never lose. Not really.”)
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All artists have unique paths. Bresson, Tarkovsky, and Melville are three examples of artists who inspire us not only with their masterful filmmaking and timeless films but also with how they began their careers as filmmakers. It does not matter at what age you start. It does not matter from where you start. The pursuit of your dreams and passions is a never-ending quest. The right time to start is always now.
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Le Samouraï
1967, Jean-Pierre Melville
@tcmparty live tweet schedule for the week beginning Monday, December 27, 2021. Look for us on Twitter…watch and tweet along…remember to add #TCMParty to your tweets so everyone can find them :) All times are Eastern.
Monday, December 27 at 8:00 p.m.
BREATHLESS / À bout de souffle (1960)
A small-time hood hides out from the cops with his American girlfriend.
Friday, December 31 at 8:00 p.m.
THE THIN MAN (1934)
A husband-and-wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost gets killed for their efforts.
